Free design proof on every custom order: no templates, no stock SKUs
Car decals are cut vinyl graphics built for painted body panels, bumpers, tailgates and rear windows. Designed to hold through car washes, highway wind and full sun without lifting or fading at the edges. They work as single-color cut lettering for a business name and phone number, or as a full-color printed graphic for a logo, mascot or accent stripe. Because each one is cut to the outline of the artwork itself, there's no visible background square or rectangle left on the paint.
A car decal is a shape or graphic cut from adhesive vinyl and applied directly to a vehicle's paint, glass or trim. Different from a magnet, which sits on top of a panel, or a full wrap, which covers it entirely. Most decals are made from one of two vinyl types. Calendered vinyl is thinner and less expensive, a reasonable fit for a decal that only needs to last a season or two on a flat panel. Cast vinyl is thicker, more flexible and holds its color longer under direct sun, which is why it's the standard choice for anything that needs to wrap around a curved fender or door edge, or that's expected to stay put for several years.
Businesses use car decals for the same reason they always have: a vehicle parked at a job site or moving through traffic puts a logo and phone number in front of far more people than a static sign does. A single-color cut decal. A shape or block of lettering cut straight from colored vinyl sheet, with no printing involved. Covers a company name and contact line at low cost and resists fading well, since there's no printed ink to break down. A full-color printed-and-cut decal handles a logo with multiple colors or a photo-based graphic, and works just as well for personal use: family stickers, sports team marks, hobby graphics or a simple accent stripe along a rocker panel.
Placement affects both how a decal reads and how long it lasts. A rear window or tailgate gets seen in traffic and takes less direct sun than a hood or roof, which sees the most UV and heat over the course of a year. Door panels are the standard spot for a business name since they're visible from the sidewalk whenever the vehicle is parked. Bumpers flex more than body panels and take more road spray, so a decal placed there holds up better with a laminate layer protecting the cut edges from lifting.
Before ordering, it helps to settle on placement and finished size together. A decal sized to read well on a door won't scale the same way onto a rear window, and vice versa. The painted surface needs to be clean, dry and free of wax residue for the adhesive to bond properly, and anything going onto a curved panel benefits from cast vinyl's flexibility over the stiffer calendered option. For a fleet with more than one vehicle, keeping placement and size consistent across the group is what makes the branding read as a set instead of a collection of one-offs.
Almost every decal starts as adhesive-backed vinyl film, and the choice inside that is between calendered and cast. Calendered is rolled flat, costs less and stays happy on a flat panel for a season or two. Cast is poured, thinner and far more flexible, which is what lets it lie down over a curved fender or a recessed door edge without lifting at the corners later. Paper is not an option outdoors: it absorbs water, tears at the corners and fades in weeks.
Which one do I actually need? Flat surface, a year or two, calendered is fine. Curves, or several years in full sun, cast. Tell us the surface and we will pick it.
This is the fork that decides everything downstream. A printed decal has artwork laid onto the vinyl in CMYK or Pantone, which handles photographs, gradients and any number of colors. A cut decal has no ink at all: a plotter cuts the shape straight out of a sheet of solid colored vinyl and the waste is weeded away by hand. Cut work holds its color for as long as the film lasts, because there is no ink layer to fade, but one sheet is one color.
Can a cut decal have two colors? Yes, by cutting each color separately and applying them in register. Routine at two or three, fiddly beyond that.
The adhesive is specified against the surface and against how long the decal is meant to stay there, and getting it wrong is the most common cause of a decal that fails. Permanent adhesive grips hard and is the default for vehicles and exterior signage. Removable comes away cleanly for months afterwards, which is what a seasonal promotion or a dated permit needs. Static cling uses no adhesive at all and holds to glass by surface contact, so it leaves nothing behind.
Will a permanent decal damage my paint? Not on sound factory paint. It will lift a poor respray, and it needs heat and a plastic blade to come off cleanly after a few years.
A clear film over the printed face, and on anything going outdoors it is not decoration. UV is what fades a printed decal, and a laminate is the layer that takes that hit instead of the ink. It also absorbs the abrasion a decal gets from brushes in a car wash, from road grit and from being wiped down. Gloss lifts color saturation, matte kills reflections on glass, and a textured laminate adds scuff resistance where the decal is within reach.
Is it worth the extra? Outdoors, always. An unlaminated print in full sun visibly shifts inside a year; laminated, it holds for several.
A vehicle is the most demanding surface a decal goes on: it flexes, it heats, it gets driven through brushes at speed and it is washed with detergent. Cast vinyl handles the curves of a fender or a door edge without lifting. A laminate takes the abrasion. And placement matters as much as material, because a rear window is read in traffic while a door panel is read in a parking lot.
Will it survive a car wash? Yes, applied properly and laminated. The failures we see are edges lifted by a pressure washer held close and square on.
Tell us the surface and how long it has to stay there. Those two answers pick the material, the adhesive and the laminate together, and getting them wrong is what makes a decal lift at the corners.
A clear film over the printed face that takes the sun instead of the ink. This is the difference between a decal that still looks right in three years and one that has visibly shifted by the end of its first summer. Gloss for saturation, matte where reflections off glass would be a problem.
A blade following the actual outline of the artwork rather than a rectangle around it, so nothing frames the design when it is applied. It needs a real vector path in the file, because a blade cannot follow an edge that exists only as pixels.
A carrier film laid over cut work so separated pieces, letters, a logo with detached parts, land on the surface correctly spaced. You position the whole assembly, squeegee it down, then peel the carrier off. Without it, cut lettering has to be applied one character at a time.
Picking the waste vinyl out from around and inside cut shapes by hand. It is the step that limits how fine cut work can go, because the practical constraint is not what a blade can cut but what a person can lift out without disturbing what stays. Small enclosed counters are where that bites.
Same family, genuinely different jobs. Your current selection is highlighted.
| Decal | From | Build | Order it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vinyl Decals | $160 | Printed adhesive vinyl | The general-purpose outdoor decal |
| Custom Decals | $160 | Your size, shape and quantity | Nothing standard fits the job |
| Die-cut Vinyl Decals | $160 | Solid color vinyl, plotter cut | Type and logos with no background |
| Custom Die-cut Decals | $160 | Cut to the artwork outline | No background shape around the logo |
| Outdoor Decals | $160 | UV laminate over outdoor vinyl | It faces months of sun and rain |
| Window Decals | $170 | Clear or white vinyl for glass | It is read through a window |
| Car Decals | $160 | Cut vinyl for panels and glass | It has to survive car washes and highway grit |
| Double Sided Decals | $160 | Printed on both faces | It is read from both sides of the glass |
| Parking Decals | $160 | Windshield or window permit | An attendant checks it at a glance |
| Round Decals | $160 | Circular cut | A seal or badge with no top or bottom |
| Oval Decals | $160 | Oval cut | A wordmark wider than it is tall |
| Square Decals | $160 | Equal width and height | QR codes and grid-based layouts |
| Rectangular Decals | $160 | Square cut, most efficient | Maximum layout area per sheet |
Not on sound factory paint. Removed with gentle heat and a plastic blade it comes away without marking, though on a car that has spent years in the sun the paint underneath will be less faded than the paint around it. It will lift a poor respray or a clear coat that has already begun to fail.
Yes, applied properly on cast vinyl with a laminate. The failure we actually see is a pressure washer held close and square onto an edge, which will get under any decal given a few seconds. Keep the lance back and angled and it is a non-issue.
Cut lettering for a business name, phone number and web address: it costs less, holds its color longer and looks deliberate. Printed for a logo with several colors, a gradient or a photographic element. Many vehicles end up with both, cut text and one printed mark.
Rear window and tailgate for traffic, because that is what the car behind you reads at a light. Doors for anything seen while parked at a job site or a client's driveway. Avoid deep body creases and rubber trim, where no adhesive holds reliably for long.
Pricing for car decals starts at $160 and moves with quantity, size, material and finish rather than sitting on a fixed list. Setup is shared across the run, so the per-unit price drops steeply as the quantity rises: the gap between a few hundred and a few thousand is usually the significant one. Send the size, quantity and what it has to do and you get a firm figure back, not a range.
There is a practical minimum rather than a hard one. Every run carries artwork checks, a proof and a press setup, so a very small quantity of car decals prices poorly per unit even though we will still make it. If you are ordering a small batch, ask for pricing at two or three quantities at once: the curve usually shows that a modest increase costs very little more in total.
The clock starts when you approve the proof, not when the order is placed, which is the part most people are surprised by. You get a proof first: a digital proof showing the artwork, the cut line and the finished size. On window work it shows the correct orientation for the side of the glass it is going on, which is the mistake that is expensive to catch late. Turnaround after approval depends on the finish: anything laminated, foiled or die-cut adds a stage that cannot be compressed without causing problems later. Tell us the date you actually need them and we will work backwards from it rather than quoting a generic lead time.
Print-ready artwork with bleed and a safe margin, supplied as a PDF, AI or EPS. Photographic elements should be supplied at the resolution the finished size needs, not the resolution that looks sharp on screen. If your file is not print-ready, say so when you order. We would rather fix it before the proof than after the run.
Yes. Panels, curves and car washes is the standard build, and the dimensions around it are yours to set. A size that sits efficiently on the press sheet often costs no more than a standard one, while an awkward proportion that wastes half the sheet does. Ask before you commit and we will tell you whether a small change to the dimensions saves a disproportionate amount.
In most cases they are the same product under a different name: the trade uses several terms for it depending on the region and the supplier. What actually defines this one is the build: cut vinyl for panels and glass. Order it when it has to survive car washes and highway grit. If you have seen it called auto decals elsewhere, describe what it has to do rather than which name you found, and we will match the specification.
Yes. We provide free samples, and on car decals it is worth asking for one, because the difference between calendered vinyl and cast vinyl is obvious in the hand and invisible on a screen. Most orders run on calendered vinyl, but ask for whichever you are weighing up. You also get a free design proof before anything goes to press, so nothing is printed that you have not seen.
The usual choices are uv laminate, contour cutting, transfer tape. Finish is not decoration on this product so much as a decision about how long it survives and how it reads in the hand, so it is worth choosing against the job rather than the budget. Tell us where the finished piece ends up and we will say which finish is doing real work and which is only adding cost.
Yes, and that is what almost every order here is. Nothing in this catalogue is a stock item: car decals are manufactured to the specification you give us, with your artwork on them. Send your logo as vector artwork where you have it, since that scales to any size without softening. If all you have is a low-resolution file, tell us and we will say what it needs before it reaches the press.
Yes, and a repeat run is simpler than the first one. We keep your approved specification on file, so a reorder skips the setup decisions and goes straight to production. If nothing about the artwork or the specification has changed, there is nothing to re-approve. Tell us the previous order and we will match it rather than starting the specification again.
Yes. Regalo Print has been producing custom commercial print for businesses across North America since 2008, and every order ships tracked. The tracking number reaches you the day the job leaves, not the day it arrives. If you are working to a fixed date, say so when you order so the production schedule is built around the delivery date rather than the other way round.
